Takarazuka
Subtitle: sexual politics and popular culture in modern Japan
By: Jennifer Robertson.
Edition: 3rd printing with corrections.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 278
Subjects: Takarazuka Kagekidan; Ethnology -- Japan; Theater -- Japan; Musicals -- Japan; Popular culture -- Japan; Sex role -- Japan; Social structure -- Japan; Japan -- Social life and customs
Description: The all-female Takarazuka Revue, founded in 1913 as a novel counterpart to the all-male Kabuki theater, is world-famous today for its rococo musical productions, including gender-bending love stories, torridly romantic liaisons in foreign settings, and fanatically devoted fans. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork and archival research, Jennifer Robertson explores how the Revue illuminates sexual politics, nationalism, imperialism, modernity, and popular culture in twentieth-century Japan.

By situating the Revue within its social, historical, and cultural contexts, she challenges both stereotypes of "the Japanese" and Eurocentric assumptions about gender performance and sexuality.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-264) and index.